학술논문

Cosmological particle production in a quantum field simulator as a quantum mechanical scattering problem
Document Type
Working Paper
Source
Subject
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Condensed Matter - Quantum Gases
High Energy Physics - Theory
Language
Abstract
The production of quantum field excitations or particles in cosmological spacetimes is a hallmark prediction of curved quantum field theory. The generation of cosmological perturbations from quantum fluctuations in the early universe constitutes an important application. The problem can be quantum-simulated in terms of structure formation in an interacting Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) with time-dependent s-wave scattering length. Here, we explore a mapping between cosmological particle production in general (D+1)-dimensional spacetimes and scattering problems described by the non-relativistic stationary Schr\"odinger equation in one dimension. Through this mapping, intuitive explanations for emergent spatial structures in both the BEC and the cosmological system can be obtained for a large class of analogue cosmological scenarios, ranging from power-law expansions to periodic modulations. The investigated cosmologies and their scattering analogues are tuned to be implemented in a (2+1)-dimensional quantum field simulator.
Comment: References and new section added. (22 + 14) pages, (13 + 7) figures, (1+1) tables